Guiding Principles
The urgency of climate change is upon us as well as the potential to shift to ways of living and working that fulfill human needs far better than we do today. There is no time to waste and there are no people to waste. Our work is inspired by the idea that the greatest resource we can access now is peoples’ creative ideas put into action through collaboration.
The guiding principles of creativity, collaboration, and resilience are three key qualities that inform all of our work in helping people and organizations create a thriving sustainable future:
Creativity – Creativity means bringing something new into form that has never existed. Being able to invent a fresh or innovative response in the face of a changing context is critical to our ability to be resilient. We are committed to bringing our clients the most effective tools to seed the flexible, spontaneous, and spacious environments that spark creativity.
Individually, creativity and inspiration happen when we’re really present and in the moment, really listening to the mind as well as the heart and the gut. When we extend this deep listening to our colleagues, collaborators, clients, and communities, we open ourselves to new ideas and solutions.
Collaboration – Creativity researcher Keith Sawyer writes in his book Group Genius “when we collaborate, creativity unfolds across people; the sparks fly faster, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Collaboration drives creativity because innovation always emerges from a series of sparks – never a single flash of insight.” We are committed to using collaboration in all facets of our work to generate new outcomes that could only emerge from the combination of many people working together.
As individual leaders, to work collaboratively means we need skills in how to co-create, inspire and engage people, communicate and convey our ideas with clarity, listen and build trusting supportive relationships.
Resilience – The people and organizations that thrive are those that can change as things are changing. Resilience comes from receiving feedback, discerning where change is needed, taking action to adapt old forms and invent new ones, and sharing learning as we go. “Systems thinking” is a critical skill to be resilient, where we understand relationships and patterns of what actions lead to what actions (or which causes to which effects) and are attuned for feedback so we can learn and make changes. We are committed to working in way that focuses on the core capacities each organization or network needs to ensure resilience.
It is fundamental to our work to strengthen leaders’ personal resilience with the resources, tools, and support to do effective meaningful work and live a balanced fulfilling life.